Death Note news articles

Our interest here in singer, songwriter and US NBC The Voice competitor Christina Grimmie is rather peripheral, which makes news of her fatal shooting by a previously unacquainted killer no less saddening.

Police investigators in Orlando, Florida, have yet to uncover a motive for gunman Kevin James Loibl's actions. He had apparently set out to kill her on June 10th 2016, armed with several weapons and travelling two hours across the US state to reach her.

Outside concert hall The Plaza Live, Christina Grimmie and rock band Before You Exit were signing autographs, posing for pictures and chatting with those who had come to watch them perform that night. Or merely to be there meeting them afterwards. A voracious updater of social media (wherein she'd grown to fame as a star on YouTube), Christina had encouraged folk to pop down and say hello, if they could. It was fun, exciting, a happy and friendly event; eye-witnesses said she opened her arms to hug Loibl as he approached upon his turn to do so.

He opened fire and killed her, then shot himself dead too.

A sickening, senseless story, as I'm certain most here will agree. But what has it got to do with us?

The fact is that Christina Grimmie was one of us. For all her celebrity and meet and greet press of crowds vying for a moment in her company, she was also a Death Note fan. Who got excited when she was able to wear her L cosplay while recording a music video.

That's what she took to social media about at the time, that's what she wanted to share - not the fact that she was making the promo for her own song Shrug.

A notion no doubt met wryly by more than a few of us with the ability to chuck an L cosplay together from the contents of our wardrobes, but not film a music video to transmit to thousands, who wanted to actually hear us sing our songs.

Seventy weeks before she was killed, Christina Grimmie sat with friends and watched the last episode of the Death Note anime. As so many of us have done, and like us all, it was viewed with gleeful anticipation, as her Instagram snapshot confirms. An event worth recording. An excuse for a party. One of us.

Just over a year ago, she was showing us Mello, L and Near on her computer's wallpaper and telling us it makes her happy. I don't know about you, but I've got Mello on my PC background image and it makes me happy.

For the record, I've also got Matt as a theme on my browser. It also makes me happy.

The purpose of all this? No matter how remote and star-studded, scratch the surface and we're all the same. If not in the specifics, then the generalities certainly: one fan likes Mello, another L, a third is Team Kira, a fourth is for Mikami, a fifth prefers Naruto and the last can't stand manga/anime, but has a passion for NASCAR.

In the passion, we find points of commonality with all humankind, regardless of its focus. In tears and love too, we touch the same, no matter that we might not grieve or infatuate our hearts upon identical loves. Different subjects irritate; things distastefully seen or grinding sentiments heard might drive us to fury according to our own perspectives; yet she share with all that well of anger ready to propel us into attempting to improve our world as per our lights.

No-one is so alien to our very own humanity that they should be hunted down and shoot for whatever motive.

Christina Grimmie might have been a glittering star in the limelight and a vivacious entertainer. But she was also somebody's daughter, somebody's sister - her brother nearly died trying to save her - somebody's friend and confidante.

And she was a Death Note fan just like us. We are bereft, one down tonight, and that has to do with us all.

While all the world's press are busy confirming Keith Stanfield's undisclosed role in the Wingard directed Death Note movie, we can tell you precisely what part the Straight Outta Compton actor will play.

At 11am British time (June 13th 2016), tipped off by dozens of sources that the actor's place on the cast list was now official, Death Note News editor Matti popped on over to his Twitter account to follow him.

Just in time to find Keith Stanfield sneaking in a live feed dancing to a tune of Big L - his finger making that familiar Lawliet mononym shape.

Moreover, that live stream had been retweeted by Adam Wingard and was a mere 39 seconds old. Within a minute it was all gone, deleted from its Periscope.TV host, the Twittersphere and cyberspace as if it had never been.

But for our screenshot, of course.

Could he get more blatant? Apparently yes! As - we're calling it - Death Note's US L actor Keith Stanfield added two more Tweets to fill the void left by his missing live stream. One posted three days ago; the other just now.

Reproduced below, the first read simply 'Hold this L', while the latest retweeted 'Perception is key' - a three year old message (dated September 13th 2013) from @thefirst L, the apparent Official Twitter of L from Death Note. An RPer who right now probably can't believe their luck!

What added impetus - or dissolution - this development brings to the current raging debate regarding the white-washing of Wingard's Death Note cast remains to be seen.

Keith Stanfield is patently not a Protestant White American - as per the overwhelming norm in actor ethnicity shown large upon Hollywood screens. Then again, neither is Nat Wolff, an actor of Jewish heritage cast as Death Note protagonist and L's opponent Light Yagami.

However neither are they Asian (or Asian-American, as the case may be), which is the real flashpoint in this on-going controversy.

As tipped for you in our April 7th 2016 post, Netflix has indeed secured the rights to make the US live-action Death Note film. It's now known that the budget for Wingard's movie will be in the vicinity of $40-$50 million.

While also breaking hot news implied by that headline and all previously discussed above - Netflix officially cast Keith Stanfield in Death Note, as per previously strong rumours reported here last month.

Death Note's director Adam Wingard has been making announcements too vis-à-vis additions to the movie-making team. This one was via Twitter and informed us that Jason Eisener has signed up as 2nd Unit Director.

Poor thing. This must be so exciting for the Canadian director of Hobo With a Shotgun, V/H/S/2 and ABCs of Death. I can't help but imagine that his addition will be a little lost amidst the clamour about the US film's casting of L. Particularly as both public heads up came on the same day.

But Eisener didn't get a nice Variety article. Merely an admittedly 'very excited' Tweet from Adam Wingard, and a mention here from us.

Latest Production Information for Death Note Film

What Jason Eisener's appointment implies, as director of Death Note's second unit, is that there will be at least two sets running concurrently. (Prevailing rumour whispers that there will eventually be three.)

This development in the technical film-making side of things is borne witness is the latest update from the Directors Guild of Canada (download PDF, dated June 10th 2016), which otherwise doesn't add a great deal to what we already reported at the beginning of May 2016.

To spell out what that means - while Wingard oversees the action at one Death Note filming location; Eisener will be in charge of the other. Double the opportunity for Death Note fans to oops-a-daisy accidentally wander into the movie shoot, and get themselves forcibly ejected by security or constabulary.

Hopefully with pictures and/or gossip, which we'll happily share.

Filming on Death Note kicks off in Vancouver on June 29th 2016. It is currently due to finish on August 30th 2016.

The kanji for Misa Amane should be quite straight-forward. But its not.

Both are reasonably common names in Japan. Enough that none would blink at encountering an individual bearing the surname Amane, though it's not one of the topmost family names. More a marginal, decently sized minority.

Amane is actually more often found as a first name, applicable for males and females alike.

They certainly wouldn't fain surprise at bumping into a Japanese lady or girl named Misa. There's a lot of them about!

All adding up to it being not beyond the realms of possibility for there to be real life females called Misa Amane dotted about Japan.

They must have loved it when Death Note came out! Living for every update, with ten years worth of practiced responses under their belt - tried and tested in readiness to meet all those quips about shinigami eyes, ditzy dorks and Genki Girls, Light Yagami, Death Notes and referring to oneself in the third person.

Are you one? Or do you know Misa Amane in real life?

Do please come and share with us your anecdotes! We're dying to know.

(As you can probably already tell, just by looking at the dates above our heads! Sorry. I'll see myself out.)

I strove hard to create names that seemed real, but could not exist in the real world. ~ Tsugumi Ohba, How to Read, p59

If the family name Amane and given names Misa AND Amane are fairly unremarkable - taken in isolation, beyond the tedium and taint of Death Note mass killing psychos - then what's so complicated about interpreting the meaning of the kanji for Misa Amane?

Everything. Misa Amane's kanji is not like all the rest.

Most frequently used kanji for Misa in Japan:(Translation: Beautiful Assistant)

Meaning Behind Misa Amane's Given Name According to Tsugumi Ohba

Word of God moment now, as the true translation of Death Note Misa's first name isn't mentioned in the manga, anime, movies nor anywhere else.

It's in the manual, of course.

Please open your books to page 60, for in the Beginning the Death Note Creator made the Shinigami Realm and human world, and named all the characters within. Then gave them kanji to spell and shape this new reality.

The Origin of Misa's NameIt was kind of random but I think it was from "kuromisa" [Black Mass]. It must have been based on something.~ Tsugumi Ohba, How to Think, Death Note 13: How to Read, p60

It's actually most blatantly seen in the spelling of Misa's self-referential nickname. The Second Kira always name-checks herself in the third person as Misa-Misa.

As it's rendered in katakana, there's no wriggle room for dissent here. It says Misa Misa and that's that. However, as Ohba already pointed out, 'misa' is the Japanese word for 'mass' in the Catholic liturgy meaning.

Opening up an interesting notion that Misa is really calling herself 'Mass Mass', or 'the blessing and the benediction'. In which the objectifying lack of a pronoun is quite correct.

At a really quite minor stretch, it could be dismissal, as in 'Ite, missa est' (Go, the congregation is dismissed) - the words which close a Catholic mass - and/or its implied action point thereon, 'Go be a missionary; you have your mission'.

And you thought she was just being cute and Genki Girl childlike! (Not yet ruled out.)

Translation of the Amane Kanji for Death Note's Misa Misa

However, it's not just her given name that's attached to strange kanji and multi-faceted katakana.

Misa's family name is equally like no kanji that's ever been associated with Amane prior to Death Note. Nor can it be translated the same.

The usual kanji for Amane as a surname can be multiple and quite diverse, but within a certain theme of numinous incantations and the aural divine, plus pathetic fallacy. The two most common Amane kanji are:

天音 meaning Heavenly Sound

雨音 meaning The Sound of Rain

For Misa Amane's family name the kanji is thus, and quite unlike the others:

弥

This rare usage of Amane kanji means something like 'increasingly' or 'more and more'. Though where Tsugumi Ohba's mind was there, who can tell? He never explained it, but left it to us.

Posted as Part of

Our endeavour to have a Death Note gifts shop to match every character at the heart of our Month of... events finally made it in BEFORE the deadline by a fair few days.

But only because Lua took care of it, and did so with aplomb. Obrigado!

We have costumes, posters, eBay deals, figurines (some 1/6 life sized and really quite lovely), plus bags, body pillow and other miscellaneous goodies, with more coming in all the time. No really. Lua's on that case too.

Please do look in. All profits go towards the running of the site, though none came in to date!

Misa Misa portrait artist Robbuz (is not Kira) but is the founder of DeathNoteFansClub on DeviantART. She's been at its helm for seven years, welcoming fans with a global interest in Death Note and watching the group attract nearly 4,000 active members - including Death Note News, circa two seconds ago, if our request to join is approved - with another 3,000+ passively observing from the sidelines. Their page views are running into the hundreds of thousands. Busy place and vibrant community.

While back to the plot, Robbuz is the fantastically detailed digital artist behind the Misa Amane art reproduced with permission above. Called Crime Scene, it took her three hours to even begin. Much careful decision-making went into selecting the perfect outfit to be depicted in the portrait.

This Italian talent likes to work with colour, yet fittingly her Misa Misa portrait was part of a Death Note artwork series experimenting with darker tones and hues. Writing about Misa and the picture Crime Scene in particular, Robbuz wrote, 'I like how she's cheerful and lively, when she's definitely dead inside. Consider it, she sacrificed all her morality, her conscience, herself to be loved by someone who clearly just used her."

There seems to be a touch of the Mikami about this new Death Note character - a Kira aping Supreme Judge to be introduced in the fourth of the movies, out in Japan this October.

Eiichiro Funakoshi has been cast as Kenichi Mikuriya, one of the owners of a shinigami notebook in the movie Death Note: Light Up the NEW World. He picks up his Death Note after six of them fall to Earth on Kozuki Night and chaos reigns a whole lot harder.

As a high-ranking judge, it might expected that Mikuriya would hand his notebook immediately over to the appropriate legal authority for them (in this case, Tsukuru Mishima and his Death Note Countermeasure Headquarters Special Team). However, the Supreme Judge as better ideas. Rankled with the slow progress of the law, and with the occasional iniquity and unfairness of it too, Mikuriya determines the way forward to be embracing a more 'sophisticated' brand of arbitrating justice, i.e. him using the Death Note where the courtroom fails.

We can't help feeling that we've heard rhetoric like this before. You know, from Light, L, every Wammy ever, Mikami...

And ok! Mikami was a mere prosecutor, not a Supreme Judge, nor was the lawyer technically a Death Note owner. But the distinction would have been lost on any of those many thousand of names that old Teru over-dramatically scribbled into his own (borrowed/bequeathed) Death Note pages. We've had an L clone and a Kira imitator announced (plus the originals back in the forms of Misa and Matsuda), so why not Mikami.

Now bigger and better and much, much darker. Deleting along with his forerunner and the best of them.Death Note: Light Up the NEW World will be out on October 29th 2016.

Loud and over-emotional, Death Note's Misa-Misa appears not to have been blessed with much in the brain department.

Which is a shame, when she's up against the likes of Light, L and Kiyomi Takada and playing a deathly game as Second Kira. Yet she has one up on all of them, not to mention a splattering of NPA police officers and nearly all attendant Wammy House geniuses. Misa Amane survives. Moreover, she's never positively identified as Second Kira; let alone officially arrested, tried and punished for her crimes in mass murderer.

Which is more than Light Yagami manages.

Unlike both him and super-smart Teru Mikami, Misa contrives as well to be missing from the killing line-up in the Yellow Box Warehouse.

Though twice captured by Wammy detectives, and stalked by two others, she also sidesteps being murdered (directly or inadvertently) by them. Which again is more than can be said for top of her class Ms Grace herself, Kiyomi Takada, as well as usual suspects Yagami and Mikami, and their sometime stand-in Kyosuke Higuichi.

Alone of all the Kiras, Misa Amane gets to walk free at the end.

What happens next is all of her own doing, within her own control. Whether that's the dramatic suicide of the anime or the continuing on to world stardom as an actress and model, as per the live-action Death Note movies.

Not so stupid after all then.

Death Note's Misa Achieves Dividends When She Acts

Misa Amane with evidence to prove Higuichi is Kira

Whether its in retribution, career, love, favours or contribution to the Kira case, Misa Amane rarely fails to achieve any goal for which she reaches.

Nobody who ever attacked her survives long enough to gloat in their assault. Her street assailant is taken out by a Death God (Gelus); her family's murderer is initially sentenced through due legal process then killed by Kira while in prison; Soichiro Yagami threatens her with a gun - he doesn't survive a Mafia bullet later on in the tale; her torturous captor L and his carer Watari are both slaughtered by a second shinigami Rem, again on Misa's behalf; Mello and Matt both stalk her, and they are killed within weeks by Kira and/or Kira supporters; while Takada tries to take Misa's man and ends up incinerated in a lorry.

Even Light Yagami, who exploited her constantly for years, finishes the epic crawling in sobbing indignity upon the floor, crying out for Misa in his death throes.

Not all of those were of Misa's doing, nor even at her instigation, but she's certainly left with nobody alive who so much at looked at her with ill intent.

Then you get her career. As anyone who has ever set out with a dream of fame and fortune may attest, it's not easy to achieve stardom, yet Misa Amane is utterly in demand for both acting roles and modelling assignments

In the Death Note live-action movies, Misa Amane's fame is ever-growing. By the fourth, Death Note: Light Up the NEW World - to be released in October 2016 - she is at the top of her career, a Japanese idol with a firm presence in the entertainment industry; a famous name known worldwide as an actress.

During the week that Misa's introduced into Death Note manga and anime, she's on the cover of Eighteen Magazine, apparently a popular journal for the Japanese fashionatas (presumably the youthful ones).

Misa-Misa set out for fame and fortune, and got it. On her terms too, as her demands that she not kiss the main romantic male lead in one of her movies demonstrates.

In fact, as the corporate arc unfolds, Misa's work on that film shoot close by Yotsuba Tower certainly helps with the rescue of Matsuda, then later the capture of Yotsuba Kira himself.

And let's not forget that it was Misa acting unilaterally that managed to force a confession from Higuichi. That was her contribution to the Kira case. No fuss; simply done; back within an hour or two with the evidence that the men had been searching for months to secure.

Not bad for someone supposedly without any wit or two brain cells to rub together.

Nor was that the only moment wherein Misa Amane proves more resourceful and calmly able to get what she wants than all else within the Death Note plot-line.

How Clever Misa Amane Outwits Both L and Light in the Hunt for Kira

Misa Amane tracking down Light Yagami

Half a dozen chapters pass before L narrows down his hunt for Kira to a single major suspect - Light Yagami.

Misa Amane manages the same in about a week and that's only because a few days pass between the broadcast of her tapes and the proposed meeting in Otaka.

Even unto the moment of L's death and, in passing his legacy to his Wammy House successors, through to the end of Death Note - at the staging of the Yellow Box confrontation seven years on - none of the Wammys succeed in positively gaining a confession from Light that he was indeed Kira. Nor the smoking gun evidence that would convict him of the crimes enacted in that persona.

Misa Amane pulled that one off within the same aforementioned week.

Granted she had foreknowledge of the Death Note and the handy boon of shinigami eyes at her disposal; but L and the Wammys had the entire world's political, military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies, plus experts in every field and academic discipline, ready to do their bidding, and/or the Mafia. L could also call upon criminal expertise in the shape of Aiber the Conman and Wedy the top cat burglar.

Misa Amane didn't have any of that. Therefore it was perhaps quid pro quo on such scores.

Moreover, Misa not only located Light, tracked him down to his home and got a confession to being Kira out of him, she did it all without a) Light finding out who she was and b) L knowing of her existence until she began repeatedly to be seen with Light himself.

In fact, we could go as far as to say it was only her association with Light Yagami which put Misa in the frame as Second Kira. But then again, she was only there because she insisted upon being Light's girlfriend and being openly known as such in public. The latter orchestrated entirely by Misa herself in a succession of surprise meetings outside his home, at his university and wherever else she could insert herself into his presence.

Outgunned utterly by his enforced beau, Light had neither choice nor say in the matter.

Overly Attached Girlfriend Misa Amane: Is She Really So Dependent on Light?

Stereotyped throughout the Death Note fandom as the overly dependent girlfriend from Hell, that description seems only partially correct under analysis.

Misa certainly goes after and gets what she wants in the romantic stakes. Moreover, from the onset, she'll use every manipulative trick in the book to keep her man and ensure his romantic availability is retained for herself alone.

Who can forget the chilling statement that she will kill any other woman that Light dates? Basically laying it on the line at their first meeting that he gets her or nobody. Those are her terms.

In this way - however exploitative, unfair and downright psychotic it is - Misa cannot easily be cast aside. She might present herself as utterly dependent upon Light, but in reality, it's the other way around. He cannot act in some quite key situations without her Shinigami eyes; or without the usage of her Death Note and the fact of her ownership of the same.

While ostensibly Light calls all the shots, Misa gets precisely what she requires at any given time.

She wants retribution for the killing of her family, she gets it; she wants to meet Kira, she engineers it; she demands to be Light Yagami's girlfriend, she gives him no choice in the matter; she wants him to move in with her, that occurs circa the beginning of the second arc; she decides it's time to get engaged, and Misa doesn't even bother to consult with Light on that one, she tells Kiyomi Takada first instead.

Financially, Misa was a woman of independent means for years before Light Yagami secured the Kira Task Force position to consider himself the same. She was the one with the money, the prestige, the social standing and the sole occupancy of an apartment. She bought her own furniture, clothes, make-up and every other possession with her own funds, including the phone and its network charges that she presents to Light and pays for on his behalf.

Even when Light gets a job and asks Misa to stop working as per social expectation, she could (and does in the Death Note movies) return to her career at any time.

Misa Amane as the Archetypal Anime Genki Girl

In most fan imaginings, Misa-Misa is Death Note's very energetic answer to that stalwart of anime character archetypes - the Genki Girl. She shouts, screams, rushes about, glomps, squees and generally acts like the average three year old on a profusion of E numbers. Or, indeed, E.

There's plenty of scenes to throw into the mix in support of this designation. Yet look more closely. Shouldn't that be every scene?

In reality, Misa seems to switch Genki Girl on or off, or applies attributes to a precise level, depending upon the situation and who's watching. She's like someone who's read all about Genki Girl and figured that she can pull it off, so goes for it whenever the persona will cover a multitude of personal sins and/or throw people off the scent of her actual intelligence.

Take for example her meeting the Yagami women, whilst visiting Light at home. There Misa is the epitome of maturity; a demure Japanese lady full of politeness and decorum, give or take the length of her skirt. Yet outside, alone with Light on another occasion, she glomps him with all the enthusiastic screaming passion of the Genki Girl personified, now that his mother isn't watching.

Nor does she bamboozle Yotsuba Kira Hidechi with a steady stream of relentless words. Those she chooses are articulate and leading, with adequate gaps in between for him to speak enough to condemn himself.

Meanwhile, there's absolutely nothing of the motormouth, highly animated and over-emotional Genki Girl in Misa when she's detained by L as suspected Second Kira. To be fair, she's also in a full-body straitjacket, so none of that excessively expressive movement is physically able to be on show.

Yet you get the impression it wouldn't be either.

Hidden Reserves of Strength in Misa-Misa

That prolonged scene in a straitjacket, effectively being tortured into submission by L, tells a lot about Misa Amane's true strength of character.

With his arms handcuffed behind his back, Light plays the game in full knowledge of his Kira-hood for a week, then gives that contextual understanding up. Within three days, he's pleading, begging, demanding to be set free, sure that he's not Kira and adamant that he's going to say so repeatedly.

Meanwhile, Misa Amane remains silent and strapped upright to a board, blind-folded, devoid of human contact beyond an electronic voice communicating through a speaker. Not a single word uttered in condemnation nor defense. Nothing whatever to make it worth her torturers' time in detaining her.

When she eventually does feel herself cracking, she finally does speak, but only to ask Rem to kill her. The words enigmatic without context to those listening on. The remainder of her days tortuously attached in that position in a state of near sensory deprivation would have been passed without knowledge of Kira nor her part in the Death Note killings. Yet she still doesn't say much nor beg as Light Yagami did.

Coming to the conclusion that she's been abducted as per her fame, Misa intelligently attempts to humanise herself and make a deal with her abductor.

L eventually has to let her go for the sake of nothing incriminating being divulged to prove her role as Second Kira, nor to use as evidence against Light. How many others could have withstood so much under torture? Most in that position would be agreeing, admitting or issuing confessions to all and sundry, just to make the torture stop.

Misa Amane: Worldly Wise and Self-Possessed of All her Assets and Skills

Nobody is suggesting for one instant that Death Note's Misa Amane is some unsung genius (though an interesting case might be made for that). However she certainly isn't the dim-witted, unaware character so many make her out to be.

She has drive, intelligence and self-knowledge enough to ensure that she gets what she wants, through a considered application of the attributes and tools in her personal arsenal. She can definitely identify goals, pinpoint way and devise strategies to achieve them, then action those tactics with usually astounding results.

Mostly Misa is fabulous at keeping herself under the radar by ensuring those around her think she's too stupid to understand much that is happening.

However, she proves time and again that she can read situations - and especially people - with a keen accuracy. She can be cute enough to sexually manipulate the men; childish enough to annoy or delight, but never be taken seriously enough for people not to scheme in her vicinity. She sees more than she ever lets on.

She can charm anyone, and uses that to great effect to get people waiting on her hand and foot.

However, when the occasion calls for it, Misa's intelligence shows all the above to be the veneer of an actress. Probably a psychopathic one at that, but certainly not the Genki Girl that she's studiously manufactured her self-image to be.

Published as Part of

This summer, Viz Media celebrates its 30th birthday firmly entrenched as North America's foremost exporter, and promoter, of Japanese manga and anime.

There will be no big party in the streets by all accounts. Yet fans can look forward to special offers and goodies given out as a thank you for for thirty years of support.

However, those deals currently announced are only available to indivduals attending anime conventions across the USA. Kicking off on July 1st-4th 2016, at the Los Angeles Anime Expo, and continuing throughout the summer and autumn season. More on all that when we know further.

What Did Viz Media Ever Do for Us Anyway?

The obvious response is that Viz Media brought us Death Note. Game over and cause to party right there.

However, if we can broaden our horizons for just three seconds, an even greater boon may be discerned. If you're reading from a Western nation then you have a lot to thank the company for in how it's spent those decades. Viz Media is probably the reason that you're here, or have even heard of Death Note.

Even if only indirectly, with Viz acting as the trend-setter company that inspired others elsewhere to follow its lead, bringing Japanese pop culture into your local stores.

It barely seems possible that a time existed when the words 'manga' and 'anime' weren't mainstream in the West. That outside Japan and its immediate neighbouring states, only Eastern ex-pats, Japanese Cultural Studies students, and a scattering of literary sci-fi geeks in any nation could have told you with any certainty what such alien terms described. Or even hazarded a decent guess.

Yet in 1986, when Seiji Horibuchi - a Japanese ex-pat from Shikoku, then living in San Francisco - mooted to friends the notion that he could interest Americans in manga, anime and other cultural mainstays from his homeland, most people laughed. They didn't think readers in the US would go for that at all.

Though obviously the majority first had to ask him what manga and anime were, before getting on with the general amusement and cynicism.

Three decades later, we can say with great certainty that he wiped the smile off their faces. Seiji's efforts through Viz Media - the company he founded to make good his idea and his dream - not only made him extremely rich, it secured a place for manga, anime and all else attached in the American heart and throughout the Western world.

Viz Media founder Seiji Horibuchi

Roland Kelts Puts Viz Media's Achievements in Context

Buy Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded by US by Roland Kelts on Amazon US

Just in case you haven't already grasped the enormity of Viz Media's impact in the West, Roland Kelts is on hand to spell it out.

As an academic specialising in Japanese Cultural Studies, Kelts is an author; essayist; lecturer at Keio University, Tokyo (and the occasional TED Lecture too); journalist with regular articles and columns in such illustrious publications as Time Magazine, The New York Times, Newsweek Japan and The Guardian; and steering committee member of the Tokyo Think Tank Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation.

He also wrote the acclaimed JapanAmerica (see left), all about how Japanese manga, anime and other pop culture became so big in the USA.

In May 2016, his monthly editorial for The Japan Times was devoted to Viz Media's thirty years as the main instigator of that.

Entitled ﻿Viz's 30 Years Pack a Punch in the US﻿ (May 14th 2016), Kelts outlines how Seiji Horibuchi pulled it off - from unlikely beginnings in the 1980s through to the legacy left behind by the time he parted company with Viz Media to explore pastures new.

Comparing notes with modern day Chief Marketing Officer Brad Woods, Kelts explores how Viz Media played a key role in the changing face of manga interest and sales throughout the West; touches upon the ever-growing mainstream awareness of Japanese pop culture, and projects how that success may continue into the future.

He's rather excited about how titles like Death Note are discussed as commonplace, particularly within the glittering circles of Hollywood studios executives, telling us that, 'in all the years I’ve watched manga and anime become mainstays in American homes, I’ve never seen a moment quite like this.'

More to the point, Kelts discusses the effect of such global popularity success on the domestic market in Japan. With its shrinking population population and declining consumerism, the business opportunities at home were always limited. The injection of worldwide capital turned out to be very timely and very welcome for the overall prosperity of that island nation.

Not bad for a notion mooted by a San Francisco hippy, which turned out to be quite a fabulous one at that. Happy 30th birthday, Viz Media; the celebrations may run worldwide.

Death Note's Misa Amane had to give up half of her remaining life span in order to see the future.

The actress who voiced her in the original Japanese anime - Aya Hirano - only has to go to sleep.

Misa-Misa's foreknowledge was limited solely to the Fated death dates of all humans within her view. A fact that she was usually due to change anyway. Meanwhile the precognitive scope of Aya, who played her, knows no limits.

It would seem that the seiyū wins this round of preternatural skill acquisition and application.

With many a fan in conversation and the occasional interviewer too, Aya Hirano has told how she was born with her psychic gift. An hereditary clairvoyancy shared by her mother.

Precognition (or intuition - her rendering in Japanese as 特技 予知 could be read in English as either) was even listed in early profiles of the actress as one of her skills, alongside playing the piano and calligraphy.

Aya Hirano and her mother have predictive dreams, which later transpire to play out in reality.

Not quite the vision supplied by shinigami eyes, but I'm sure that both ladies are very grateful for that, preferring their version of The Sight over that suffered by poor Misa Amane!

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By all accounts, Death Note is not a very old anime. Yet since its original run, much has changed.

Misa Amane’s capture was the result of a series of mistakes relating to VHS tapes, but such things are no longer regularly used in our modern world. Flip phones are no longer the dominant device and have instead been replaced with multi-function smartphones.

With that in mind, we’re going to examine how certain key plot elements relating to Misa would have been different were the story to have taken place around today. Would our female protagonist have been captured so quickly? Would modern technology have aided her escape? Perhaps events might have unfolded differently.

Storage Media

L exhibits Misa's VHS tape

As I said before, Misa’s mishaps began with her submission of four tapes to Sakura TV.

Here we would find the first large difference in story had it be cast a little later: VHS pretty much disappeared from use a few years after the show’s original airing.

A more contemporary telling of the story would have her submitting these videos through a different medium. These are some of the most likely candidates:

A CD/DVD recording

Files on a flash drive or SD card

Email (yet unlikely due to file size)

A cloud sharing service

Two possibilities completely remove the physical evidence discovered in the story: there are no finger prints on sent files, no ink or paper to link the notes and since the files could be sent from anywhere, train tickets would not serve as relevant evidence.

On the other hand, these types of media also leave behind a trail. L might have been able to trace Misa’s IP address from an email, or go to the next level and determine where and when the email address was created in the case of a fake email account.

The same is true of the file sharing. By checking where the files were uploaded from with the cooperation of the host company, L might have been able to deduce either where Misa’s apartment is (if sent from a PC) or her general locale if sent from a mobile device.

This is assuming Misa didn’t use a VPN (Virtual Private Network). She perhaps wouldn’t have hidden her IP address in this way, although if she had it would have inevitably led to some other clever discovery to further the plot (perhaps a method of payment tracking).

As for files, L may have been able to trace the date of creation and possibly even the device used to generate the video. Whether or not this information could help track her down is uncertain, but it’s much less specific than a postage stamp (one of the other pieces of evidence they discovered in her apartment).

Social Media: A Database of Targets

When Misa first established contact with Kira, it was because of her abilities (recall she couldn’t see his life span, but could see his name). But at the time of the show’s initial run, social media wasn’t yet very significant. Social media would have presented a very different story because of the sheer number of pictures people take and post online. Granted, these pictures aren’t always labeled or tagged.

This is where Misa’s power comes in. Just looking at the photos with her Shinigami eyes would no doubt have given her the ability to choose from as many victims as she pleased. This huge database would also allow her activities to be considerably more covert than Light’s (although he might have also had a social media page in a modern retelling).

Misa uses her Shinigami eyes to identify victims...

... and Kira too.

Whether or not Kira would have used social media is a difficult call. Given Light’s age, he probably would have had a page of some kind. It may even have stood in as the means for Misa discovering his identity simply through recommended friends and friends of friends.

Its unlikely social media would have had any significant impact on L. He doesn’t really come across as a character that would have a public profile, though he may have used it as a resource to track down his targets.

Smartphone Technology

Wire-tapping and text messages already existed in the early 2000s, but services like GPS were only just beginning to achieve popularity. Smartphones are very different. They can be used to pinpoint someone’s location within a few meters in some cases. They also communicate with WiFi.

All of these elements are likely to have contributed to an easier capture of Misa. With this information readily available to L and the investigation team, they would have tracked Misa down considerably faster. As a social character, she wouldn’t likely abandon her phone.

Modern cell phones can also be hacked to use their cameras to monitor the owner. Their microphones are also possible to hack with the right apps installed, which could have spelled the premature end for our heroine.

Misa's Ultimate Fate?

While I can’t imagine the plot points would be changed too much (for entertainment purposes), speculating on the realistic changes leaves me to conclude that Misa would probably have been captured and imprisoned considerably earlier than in the story’s original telling.

Yet there’s another consequence of this: Misa may not have had such a tragic end without the original series of events that followed. Her continued deeper involvement in Kira’s plots is what ultimately drove her to what we can only assume to be her suicide.

So what do you think? Would the changes in technology over the last decade have changed Misa’s situation? If you think so, tell us in the comments.

Bio: Cassie Phillips is a writer and blogger who likes to focus on entertainment topics (especially anime) and technology. She loves new tech and finds it very interesting to talk about these sorts of questions.

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It Matters: Complete Series Vol 1 by Matti (aka MRSJeevas)- Download the free eBook (totally free of charge)- Use software like ﻿﻿Calibre﻿﻿ to switch the ePub into the format of your choice

This is directed towards the Mell0/Matt fandom. The rest of you just talk amongst yourselves for a while.

How would you like every novel, drabble, short story and scrap from the Matti!Universe tidied chronologically into omnibus editions? And how would you like it if those tales - full and partial - were all properly indexed?

Matti knows that you would, because she's been repeatedly asked for something of the ilk by various readers of her fan-fiction over the years. Though the index part is a bit of a bonus.

Tipped off, Matti quietly opened Sigil and began work. The first volume was completed from scratch, including much hands on imperative tatting and learning via ALL of the mistakes, that the thing might receive that cross-referenced index.

Stephen Gevanni surely didn't do so well, when he spent a night copying a Death Note from start to finish. At least he didn't have to teach himself forgery first!

The free eBook It Matters: Complete Series Vol 1 covers every tale right up until the end of the '90s. Some have never been made public before, having languished with their existence forgotten and unknown.

Vol 2 will be 2000-2009; Vol 3 - 2010-the present day. Eventually the plan is to amalgamate that trilogy into one big, hefty, totally indexed cyber-tome that could figuratively batter binary to death.

Death Note cosplayer MolecularAgatha shares her Misa Amane for this dedicated Month of Second KiraPhotography by Mario Melendez at Universidad de Costa Rica, originally published on DeviantART.

Hailing from Costa Rica, MolecularAgatha's creativity as a cosplayer is absolutely astounding. She's a designer by vocation; a facet that tells in the attention to detail on display, throughout a great range of costumes created by and for herself. MolecularAgatha is a veteran cosplayer of many years standing.

So successful in fact that she's now gone professional - available as a cosmodel to show off costumes created by others too - with more information to be found about that on her Facebook profile page. A model with an element of the actress about her costumed roles? This makes MolecularAgatha practically a real life Misa-Misa, give or take the serial killing and shinigami eyes. I hope. We didn't actually check.

In addition to Death Note, MolecularAgatha appears to cosplay as anything and everything. Her DeviantART homepage alone has recent images covering genres in gaming, fashion, classic tales, movies, television and manga. She leaps from Princess Peach to Steampunk, Alice in Wonderland to Sailor Venus - and every picture looks exquisite; every costume fabulous.

If you've just come back from San Salvador Comic Con 2016, you might have seen her there on stage as Emma Frost or Link. If not, then there's always her online galleries to wander through and gape. In the meanwhile enjoy her Misa Misa cosplay, pictured above, and hopefully there will be more Death Note costumes added to her collections in the near future too.

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I'm afraid it's official - Kim Hasper has indicated that he will be unable to send us his responses to your questions.

It's been so many years since he voiced Light Yagami, he simply cannot return to the mindset and/or recall enough details necessary to address what you asked.

The German dub Death Note anime actor apologized for dropping out so late in the day.

Back in February 2106, during the inaugural Month of Kira event, Death Note News readers were given the chance to pose questions to him. Collected up and presented en masse, these jointly formed this promised interview.

In fairness, Kim Hasper accordingly received over one hundred queries. All duly translated as requested, but with some delay after personal issues suddenly - and understandably - took precedence for our translator, Jojo.

Another willing German speaker had to be sought quite quickly to tackle those questions still requiring re-interpretation from the English. In reality, more than one person stepped up, contributing translations as a team effort orchestrated by the amazingly multi-lingual Lua Cruz. (She also translated a portion of your questions into Spanish for Sergio Zamora!)

All's well again too with Jojo now - it was she who took the message from Kim Hasper that he'll sadly have to give this interview a miss for the above stated reasons. Also Jo who liaised with him offering further assistance, but unfortunately had to receive his apologies to pass on to you all.

Naturally we at Death Note News hope you won't be too disappointed at this news.

We are still expecting replies from Brad Swaile and Sergio Zamora; while our interview with Vincent Tong is already in the bag, not yet public only for want of some video editing expertise behind the scenes here. But coming. We promise that it's coming soon. Video editing software lessons are occurring.

Looks like the high definition, formatted blu-ray Death Note Omega Edition will be appearing in British stores later this year.

Manga Entertainment announced at MCM London Comic Con that Death Note blu-ray for the UK is on its way. The company has just secured the licence to distribute in that format to the Britons, and the description certainly matched that of Omega.

The news was simultaneously proclaimed on Twitter via its official account (see right), though fans at the convention found out first.

In both venues, the product spec was unveiled as being the entire run of thirty-seven Death Note anime episodes on blu-ray. Included are the two re-cut movie length features Death Note Relight: Visions of a God and its sequel Relight: L's Successors.

Manga Entertainment: Death Note UK blu-ray Announced on Twitter by @MangaUK, May 28th 2016

It's hard to imagine British distributors reinventing the wheel, when an English language blu-ray Death Note edition with that exact specification already exists as Omega. Available for US consumer viewers since March 1st 2016, created, packaged and promoted by Viz Media.

Urian Brown provides a pretty thorough synopsis of the story and what we may expect by revisiting its anime again in blu-ray. The main event is earmarked once again as the unbelievable quality on display through blu-ray's famed high definition focus. There's much talk of the detail in L's strawberry or Misa Amane's frills in his Viz blog entry - entitled Death Note: The Omega Edition with the tag-line Death Note finally gets the proper Blu-Ray treatment! (Viz, May 17th 2016).

Worth a read if you're wondering what all of the fuss is about.

Viz Media reps were also busy promoting its Omega Death Note blu-ray box set in Illinois last week. The company had a booth at Anime Central 2016 convention, held from May 20th-22nd at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare and Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont. Fans stopping by to say hello could walk away clutching a free give-away Death Note poster.